Some evangelicals are confused or conflicted about taking sides in the "Palestinian" conflict. They think support for Israel is too one-sided. We need to be fair to the "Palestinians."

Speaking for myself, I'm not a dispensationalist. I'm not a Christian Zionist.

I don't assume that 1948 is a significant date on the eschatological timetable. I don't assume the establishment of the modern state of Israel represents the fulfillment of prophecy. Perhaps it does. I don't rule that out. But it's not a presupposition of my position.

I don't base my position on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I don't need to know who fired the first shot.

My position can be summed up in one word: Islam.

My position is less about supporting Israel than opposing Islam. Opposing Islam is my default setting. That's the frame of reference.

The underlying problem that (so far) I have heard no one talking about is our American affluence, including conspicuous consumption and luxury, promoted to the world via movies and television as the result of “the American dream,” combined with our boast to be a “nation of immigrants.” While we do have our own poor in the U.S., most of them are living in the lap of luxury compared with many people in Latin America. And we love to show off our prosperity and affluence, even our luxurious possessions and lifestyles, to the rest of the world—including our neighbors. Then we expect them to stay away. But we are like a magnet to the poor next door. Who can blame them for being drawn almost inexorably to us?

My wife and I often watch a television show called “House Hunters International” on the Home and Garden channel. But my stomach turns when I see U.S. rich people south of our border to spend hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars on mansions on beaches in Latin American countries where just a few miles away thousands of children are literally suffering malnutrition, infant mortality (that could be alleviated), lack of education, and are living like animals in hovels.

You question that? A few years ago my wife and I took our one and only vacation to Mexico. We stayed in a very simple, inexpensive “eco-resort” on a beach south of Cancun. In the nearby town and surrounding jungles we saw with our own eyes two shocking things. Lining the beaches near our extremely modest “resort” (not even electricity in the cabanas) were enormous, luxurious gated resorts inhabited almost exclusively by Americans. In the nearby town we saw one neighborhood made up of what looked like animal barns surrounded by mud with pigs and chickens. These hovels were inhabited by women and children. The children were obviously malnourished (hugely extended, bloated stomachs typical of that disorder) and “playing” in mud among the pigs and chickens.

These people “know” that within reach is a paradise of affluence and luxury, free universal education, health care, food and…hope. And yet we who live in the lap of luxury expect them to stay away.

The problem is often framed as “those bad Latin Americans who want to come and take what we have” rather than as “we rich Americans who show off our luxury and want to keep it all to ourselves.”

As a Christian, I ask my fellow Texans and others (many of who consider themselves Christians) to consider Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Who are we, America, in the parable? Who are the Central American children standing or sitting on one side of our border or the other?

Recently a Christian man in my town, very well known, a “pillar of the community,” purchased a partially built mansion on the edge of town with twenty-three thousand square feet of living space.

Notice how he lumps middle-class Americans in with the super rich.

More to the point, there's more than one way to react to the invidious comparison. When Russian communists were exposed to American freedom and prosperity, that caused them to question their own system. "Why can't we do the same thing in our own country?"

Boris Yeltsin reacted somewhat differently to a Houston supermarket in 1989. He expressed astonishment at the abundance and variety of the products he saw, but in his autobiography Against the Grain he describes the experience as "shattering": "When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons, and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it."

After Yeltsin visited that Houston supermarket, says Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "he became a reformer." Bill Keller, a former New York Times Moscow correspondent and now the Times's executive editor, sees Yeltsin's visit to the United States in even broader perspective: "The prosperity, the rule of law, the freedom and efficiency [Yeltsin] witnessed in America, catalyzed his notions about the fraud of communism."

Debates over the Arab/Israeli conflict (which the politically correct dub "Palestinians") often center on the question of whether the Jews have a claim to the land. Richard Tucker, the late great opera tenor and observant Jew, performed a stirring rendition of "The Exodus Song":

Yet it's misleading to say "this land is mine." According to Scripture:

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me (Lev 25:23).

God is the landlord, while Israelites are tenants and caretakers.

Although the debate often swirls around the identity of the land (e.g. the borders), the larger theological issue concerns the identity of the people. Ironically, the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are deliberately ambiguous in this regard:

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

vv2 & 6 allude to Gen 1:28 and 9:1,7. Just as Adam was the progenitor of the human race, Noah is the new Adam, and Abraham is the progenitor of a new race.

In this passage, is Abraham the father of the Jews, or the father of the gentiles? His national or international descendants? The promise encompasses both referents.

i) It would obviously be cynical for secular Jews to claim God gave them the land.

ii) The Mosaic covenant is defunct. However, the land promises go back to the Abrahamic covenant, which is not defunct.

iii) Observant Jews who reject the Messiahship of Christ are covenant-breakers. Also, many modern-day Jews aren't ethnic Jews. So that's a complicating factor.

iv) Messianic Jews are arguably in a position to claim the land promises. But I think the ultimate fulfillment lies in the world to come.

v) One can be pro-Israel for geopolitical rather than theological reasons. Muslims are dangerous to themselves and to everyone else. It's foolhardy to support Muslims.

vi) Some Arab Christians complain that they were dispossessed when the modern state of Israel was established (1948). For all I know, they may have a legitimate grievance. But that's complicated. Palestine has been invaded and conquered for millennia. Successive inhabitants have dispossessed the previous inhabitants. Who are the squatters?

Arab Christians fare far better under Jewish rule than Muslim rule. It's not as if Arab Christians would be better off absent Jewish "occupation." If they didn't live in Jewish "occupied" territories, they'd live under Muslim occupied territories. See how well that works for Christians in the Mideast.

On the one hand there's the abstract, textbook, sugar-coated Hinduism pedaled by academic popularizers like Michael Sudduth. On the other hand, there's the Hinduism that Christian missionaries actually encounter:

Moral Irony: In the ancient world, the Romans reviled Christians for rumors about orgies and killing their young. In the modern world, western Secularists revile Christians for refusing to hold orgies and for refusing to kill their young.

John's literary strategy is intercalation. He will interrupt the story of the Woman and the Dragon by intercalating a totally different story.

One can note how the millennial reign is intercalated between binding and loosing episodes in 20:1-3 and 20:7-15. This literary construction is similar to Michael's war with the Dragon intercalated into the story of the Woman and the Dragon (12:7-12). Gerald L. Stevens, Revelation: The Past and Future of John's Apocalypse (Pickwick Publications, 2014), 424, 509.

Critics of Israel urge Israel to exercise "restraint." To that I'd make a couple of observations:

i) In just war theory, there's the principle of proportionality. However, that doesn't mean you should use the same amount of force as the enemy. Rather, the means should be proportionate to the goal. Don't use force far in excess of what's needed to secure the strategic objective.

But war isn't a sport, as if you should give the enemy a fair chance of beating you.

Imagine if two men, wielding baseball bats, break into your own at night and threaten your family. Are you supposed to defend yourself with a baseball bat, or reach for a gun (assuming you have a gun)? You're hardly obligated to be "fair" to the assailants by using the same weaponry.

ii) "Restraint" assumes your enemy is prepared to give in. If, on the other hand, you have a fanatical, implacable foe who will fight to the last drop of blood, then the enemy doesn't allow you to exercise restraint. He's forcing your hand.

When Christian social critics warn about the impending persecution of Christians in America, there are fellow Christians who think it's insightful to remark Christian Americans have nothing to complain about. We don't know what real persecution is. Just compare what passes for "persecution" here with what Christians face in the Muslim world.

But that completely misses the point. The purpose of this warning is to take precautionary measures to forestall that very development. If you wait until it gets really bad, then it's probably too late to reverse it. Yes, no doubt things could get far worse for Christian Americans. And dismissing that concern pretty much ensures that it will happen. Some Christians can't see three feet ahead of them. They just wait for things to befall them. If you wait for the volcano to erupt before you evacuate, there's no time to escape the pyroclastic flow.

The modern state of Israel is in a bind. Barring divine intervention, the conumdrum seems to be insoluble. Will Israel survive? This may be an empirical test of Dispensational hermeneutics.

i) How do you respond to an enemy that refuses to make peace? If the enemy is bent on your wholesale annihilation, how can you survive short of annihilating the enemy? If your enemy will do absolutely anything and everything to wipe you off the face of the map, how do you survive unless you wipe them off the map before they do it to you?

Critics are branded Israel's counterattack as "genocide." Of course, that's wildly hyperbolic. But suppose the Muslims give Israel no other option? If the ultimatum is: we (Muslims) will destroy you (Jews) unless you destroy us first, isn't that a forced option?

Short of detonating some well-placed neutron bombs in Gaza, the West Bank, maybe Syria and Iran, how does Israel defend itself?

ii) But that brings us to another horn of the dilemma. The "international community" won't allow Israel to solve the problem. If Israel took drastic action, it would face crippling economic sanctions.

iii) Israel has two adversaries: Muslims and liberals. The liberals are the nonviolent counterpart to the Muslims. It's a variation on the same conundrum. What if you have facts and logic on your side, but your opponent doesn't care? What if you argue with your opponent on his own grounds, but he makes no effort to be consistent?

To my knowledge, Israel is a liberal democracy. Its laws reflect blue state values. Conversely, its Muslim adversaries embody everything the Left says it deplores. Yet American liberals side with Israel's enemies. When Israel's ideological soul-mates side with their ideological opponents, israel has no traction. There's nothing left to say.

Everyone agrees on the rules going in. You win the poker match fair and square. Then your opponent responds by drawing his revolver.

iv) Suppose the Muslims succeeded in exterminating the Jewish population in Israel. Suppose Iran nukes Israel. Of course, the nuclear fallout would be devastating to the region, but if the Mullahs had the mindset of suicide bombers, that would be their ticket to the garden of carnal delights.

What would be the reaction? Millions of people would celebrate their demise. Dancing in the streets.

Then you'd have academics with mixed feelings about the outcome. They'd say the Muslims went too far, but the Israelis were asking for it.

The UN would issue a condemnation. The Pope would issue a condemnation. The US president would issue a condemnation. Someone might establish a new Holocaust museum.

But life would quickly go back to normal. Most people wouldn't miss the death of another six million dead Jews. Millions of people die every year. Most people don't notice. Never knew them in the first place. It's just an abstraction. A statistic.

Moral of the story: if you don't defend yourself, don't expect anyone else to come to your rescue. You and I don't mean that much to strangers.

“This is a crisis, and not simply a political crisis, but a moral one,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. On Tuesday, Mr. Moore led a delegation of Southern Baptist officials to visit refugee children at detention centers in San Antonio and McAllen, Tex. In an interview after the visit, Mr. Moore said that “the anger directed toward vulnerable children is deplorable and disgusting” and added: “The first thing is to make sure we understand these are not issues, these are persons. These children are made in the image of God, and we ought to respond to them with compassion, not with fear.”

America’s southern border is engulfed in a humanitarian crisis, as refugees fleeing violence in central America, many of them unaccompanied children, seek safety.

That done, reform is to try to make a way for those here under our “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to come out of the shadows and, where possible, make things right.

The Samaritan has no reason to claim accountability for this terrorized neighbor. He does so because he treats him, a stranger, as though he were kin. The lawyer questioning Jesus rightly sees this as showing mercy (Lk. 10:37). And Jesus says simply, “Go and do likewise.” That’s why Christians are at the border, ministering to people. And that’s why all of us should be praying for those in harm’s way on the border, and those trembling in fear in violence-torn Central American countries, as well as those exploited by traffickers and cartels.

i) Moore is too nearsighted to see that amnesty is the magnet creating the crisis in the first place. The policy he champions precipitates the result he deplores; he then cites the deplorable result to expand the ruinous policy. A classic vicious cycle.

ii) It's not a Christian virtue to be a dupe. The kids are being used as bait by La Raza and the Democrats.

iii) Presumably, Moore doesn't think children should be separated from their parents. So where should they be reunited? It's obvious that the children are being exploited by opportunistic adults to secure a foothold for the adults. If you reward that tactic, that's an open invitation to flood the Southern border.

iv) There's such a thing as destroying the very thing you came for. If you overload the system, you destroy what you came for. Everyone loses. Like dying of starvation because you hunted game species to the point of their extinction.

v) It isn't the responsibility of American wage-earners to provide for all the needy and oppressed people of the world. We couldn't do that even if we wanted to.

From what I can tell, the American economic is dying, thanks to liberal policies. We can't afford another unfunded mandate or bankrupting entitlement program.

vi) Illegal immigrants are looters. We can't afford to have waves of people plunder our goods and services. That impoverishes everyone (except the ruling class). Those who pay into the system get nothing in return because those who didn't pay into the system take it all.

vii) The parable of the Good Samaritan is not the only parable of Jesus. Here's another parable:

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps….8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves’ (Mt 25:1-2,8-9).

i) The wise virgins brought their own oil. It was theirs to keep.

ii) Notice the theme of personal responsibility.

iii) Because supplies were limited, there wasn't enough to go around. If they shared their oil, there wouldn't be enough for anyone. Before you can even provide for others, you must be in a position to provide for your own needs. Sometimes you have to be hard-nosed. Otherwise, no one benefits.

"The core message of the Christian faith has been lost in the public sector because what we are primarily known for is our political ideology or opinion," Tchividjian told The Christian Post.

"Specifically the reason why Evangelicals in America are unliked by non-Evangelicals is because we've branded ourselves as a political movement. It's not like Christians don't have opinions about what's going in our world and what's happening in our culture; I think that we do, I do, we all do, but when the primary message that the world hears from us is, "We need to fix the world…We need to stamp out all of the bad stuff," they don't hear the message that Jesus has entrusted in us," continued Tchividjian.

"If people are going to stumble over what we say, it's going to be because we're called to speak the Gospel which Paul says is a stumbling block. But I can't go out there and be a jerk and align myself with a political party or a candidate and get crucified on either the right or the left and just say "I'm just a martyr for the truth." No, you're not even speaking the truth that God has called you to speak first and foremost."

So is Tully's position that Christians should stop acting in the best interests of their children? Christians should stop protecting their children from becoming wards of the state? Christians should stop protecting babies, the elderly, and the developmentally disabled from abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia? Christians should stop defending the right of children to be raised by a real mother and father? Christians should stop warning people about the consequences of self-destructive lifestyles? Christians should stop defending their Constitutional right to preach the Gospel? Should we live to be "liked."

When James says "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (Jas 1:27), has he lost sight of "the core message of the Christian faith"? Is that an unnecessary stumbling block? As one commentator explains:

This verse is not meant as an exhaustive list of what pleases God; rather, it describes by practical example the behavior patterns exhibited by a person whose character is being shaped by "true religion," that is, genuine faith. Both personal holiness and social responsibility are manifestations of the character transformation that genuine faith effects. It is noteworthy that James includes both here, because it is difficult to be involved in the ills of the world without getting entangled in its idolatries, and it is difficult to cultivate holiness without cutting oneself off from the exigencies of the world. Ultimately, however, to be truly effective in dealing with the ills of the world requires personal holiness (cf. 3:17), and genuine personal holiness entails involvement in dealing with the world's ills. D. McCartney, James (Baker 2009),130.

God speaks, and in doing so, his very word creates and accomplishes its purposes. Roman Catholicism pays lip service to the Scriptures, but by its very dogmas, it takes away the meaning of the Scriptures.

The Bible contains scattered references to angelic warfare. I use that to designate two different, but related things: angels waging war on each other (or God), and angels waging war for or against humans.

As Christians, we must take this seriously. However, the analysis often boils down to two inadequate alternatives: "Spiritual warfare" is simply a synonym for sanctification, or else spiritual warfare is depicted in Miltonian terms: humanoid angels with superpowers, like Greek gods smiting each other. Let's briefly try to improve on those alternatives.

i) The diabolical war against God is indirect. God is invulnerable, so Satan and the demons can't attack him directly. instead, it's a kind of angelic Cold War. To take a comparison, Russia and America couldn't safely nuke each other. And because they occupy different continents, they couldn't invade each other. So they fought proxy wars through allies and satellites.

iii) Angels are shape-shifters. According to Scripture, they can assume human form. That's an extension of psychokinesis.

Heavenly angels can use their powers to protect God's people by warding off physical adversaries (Gen 19:11; Exod 14:19-20; 2 Kgs 19:35). Conversely, demons can take possession of humans or animals. Although angels can make themselves visible or audible to humans, presumably they can shadow us as unseen guardians or adversaries.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Recently I had occasion to comment on two apostates. The first was in response to an email correspondent. Here's my terse reply:

I skimmed it, as well as taking a quick general look at his blog.

There's really nothing new here. It's more about rearranging stereotypical objections to the Bible. Rearranging old furniture. The only thing that's new is the arrangement, not the content.

I'm struck by how self-important apostates are. It's not enough for them to lose their faith. They think it's terribly important to tell their story. As if everyone should be as interested as they are in themselves.

The second was in response to an apostate on Win Corduan's Facebook page:

Steve Hays Scott, what Bible scholars, church historians, and Christian scientists have you read?

Steve Hays I ask because you raise canned objections which conservative Bible scholars, church historians, and Christian scientists have repeatedly addressed. It's not enough for you to raise objections. You need to acknowledge the responses and detail why you think the responses are deficient.

Steve Hays Take some books defending the inerrancy and/or historicity of the Bible. For instance:

That's just skimming the surface. There are so many lines of evidence.

Steve Hays BTW, your self-description reflects a standard apostate trope. The "discovery" that you were hoodwinked all those years. The sense of betrayal. As if this was all part of sneaky plot to keep the faithful in the dark.

Steve Hays You commit a common fallacy of imagining that you aren't making a claim, therefore you shoulder no burden of proof. But you've been asserting many things to be the case. Those are truth-claims on your part. So you're the one who's guilty of shifting the onus onto your opponent.

Steve Hays A claim needn't be a positive claim to be a truth-claim. A negative claim is just as much a truth-claim as a positive claim. The burden of proof is the same.

Steve Hays It's not my job to remind you of what you said. You need to keep track of your own statements. Take your confused notion that "negative claims have no burden of proof. By that logic, if I say "Chain-smoking ups the risk of lung cancer," I shoulder a burden of proof, but if I deny that chain-smoking ups the risk of cancer, I have no burden of proof. If I say there are Redwoods in CA, I shoulder a burden of proof, but if I deny there are Redwoods in CA, I have no burden of proof. Really?

Steve Hays I'm not going to go down a series of rabbit trails with you. I'm not responsible for what you do with your life. If you're serious about raising intellectual objections to Christianity, then it's your responsibility, not mine, to inform yourself of what the opposing position has written in reply to the kinds of stock objections you mention.

Steve Hays To begin with, you're not a truth-seeker. You're not asking questions for information. You're not genuinely curious about the answers. If you really wanted to know the answers, you would have done so before you abandoned ship. People who first jump ship (apostates), then ask questions, have already made up their minds.

And when I call your bluff by directing you to excellent resources, you make it abundantly clear that you're not really interested in finding the answers.

I'd add that it's futile to debate with someone who doesn't know his own limitations. You don't even recognize when you're making truth-claims, and you fail to grasp that even "negative claims" carry a burden of proof. Under the circumstances, you disqualify yourself from criticizing Christianity.

i) Internet apostates are typically bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about their newfound infidelity. It's like a high school crush. They are quick to share their liberating discovery with everyone else. They retain a residual idealism, which is carryover from the Christian faith they left behind. They labor under the superficial illusion that they can jettison God, but leave everything important intact, after making some adjustments to their political views.

This instantly reveals the fact that they fail to understand the far-reaching implications of atheism. That's in part because apostates usually read hortatory popularizers. There are some secular philosophers like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, the Churchlands, David Benatar, and Alex Rosenberg (among others) who are fairly candid about the moral and/or intellectual costs of atheism. Some of them are consistent to the point of self-referential incoherence.

ii) Internet apostates fail to appreciate the radical asymmetry between atheism and Christianity. If atheism is true, Christians and atheists alike have nothing to gain and everything to lose. If Christianity is true, Christians have everything to gain and atheists have everything to lose. So atheism isn't even worth discussing. Why waste time debating the merits of nihilism?

iii) It's not enough for internet atheists to lose their faith. They feel the emotional need to announce their apostasy, then say: "Prove me wrong!" Why do they imagine it's incumbent on Christians to refute their infidelity? It's the apostate who will pay the price.

Imagine if I'm walking along the river, and I see a guy about to dive in. I warn him that it's dangerous to swim there because there's a large crocodile that frequents that river.

He responds by challenging me to prove there's a crocodile in the river, even though I was doing him a favor by warning him. Why is it incumbent on me to prove myself to him when I was doing him a favor in the first place?

But suppose I show him some photos I took of the crocodile. Suppose he asks me how I know that's a real crocodile and not an inflatable toy. Why should I try to accommodate him at that point?

Suppose he dives in. The crocodile surfaces and heads straight for him. He yells at me, telling me to jump in and rescue him.

Sorry, but it's not my duty to risk my hide to save his hide because he chose to disregard my repeated warnings. He has no right to put me in danger.

There are 7 billion people in the world, most of whom never had the advantages of the apostate.

i) At the risk of oversimplification, premils interpret Revelation more literally, but think the bulk of the action takes place at the tailend of church history while amils interpret Revelation more symbolically, but think the bulk of the action takes place throughout the church age.

To some extent these are irreconcilable positions. As such, the amil/premil debate will remain at an impasse. But to some extent I think it poses a false dichotomy.

ii) I think many amils are repelled by the "materialism" or "carnality" of the premil reading. Repelled by cartoonish depictions of Armageddon in pop dispensationalism. Repelled by the suggestion that Revelation is describing real physical warfare in the future. Real bloodshed. Flesh-and-blood combatants attacking each other.

Amils react by etherializing, privatizing, and even secularizing the text. That it's basically about the history of world missions, and sanctification (i.e. the battle between good and evil within the human heart).

That, however, generates an internal tension in amil hermeneutics. For if Revelation is, in fact, describing church history in general, then church history includes real warfare. For instance, during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Catholic authorities tried to exterminate the Protestant movement. That led to civil wars and armed resistance. So if, as amils, we think the descriptions in Revelation apply to church history, then some of the martial imagery could and should be taken more literally. For church history is often gritty, grisly, and gory. That's unfortunate, but that's a fact.

iii) This also goes to the nature of the symbolism. For instance, the OT contains some mythopoetic descriptions of the Exodus (e.g. Ps 74:13-15; Isa 51:9-10). Yet these correspond to an actual event. Likewise, we have a couple of back-to-back accounts of OT battles, where the first version is prosaic while the second version is poetic (Exod 14-15; Judg 4-5).

A symbolic account doesn't imply that what the account stands for is a different kind of event. To the contrary, it can be the same kind of event.

I don't think an angel opens a hatch in the firmament and empties a bucket of brimstone onto the earth below. And I doubt John thought that either. But the OT depicts real natural disasters, real celestial portents and prodigies. As such, there's no reason to preempt an interpretation of the Apocalypse in terms real natural disasters, astronomical phenomena, angelic apparitions, &c. There's ample precedent for that in OT history and literature.

When, therefore, Revelation contains battle scenes, the fact that these are couched in symbolic imagery doesn't necessarily mean they stand for something other than actual battles. Although that's possible, the mere fact that the descriptors are metaphorical doesn't entail that conclusion.

iv) Revelation naturally depicts warfare in archaic terms. Yet in theory, even that could be fairly realistic. If the power grid was destroyed by cyberterrorists or EMP devices, our hitech society would revert to more primitive technology.

I happen to think that's a clunky way to interpret futuristic prophecy. But I make that observation for the sake of argument, as a limiting case.

vi) In church history, miracles are reported in connection with Christian persecution (e.g. the Covenanters, the Camisards). If Revelation depicts recurring kinds of events in the course of church history, then the supernatural elements in the Revelation narrative may well have church historical counterparts.

vii) In my opinion, the imagery in Revelation is flexible. Although it sometimes denotes specific events (e.g. the life of Christ, the final judgment), it more often denotes particular kinds of events rather than particular events. Kinds are repeatable. That dovetails with the cyclical action we find in Revelation.

It's possible that if the conflict escalates towards the end of the church age, church history will more closely resemble OT history in terms of open supernaturalism. To that extent, one can agree with amils on the scope of Revelation, but agree with premils on the physicality or supernaturalism of the referents. Amils view the plot of Revelation as a spiral, combining repetition with progression. And a spiral and pick up the pace towards the end–as it narrows.

Ironically, many premils are cessationists, which generates a degree of tension between their cessationism and their supernaturalistic reading of Revelation. Apparently, cessationism is suspended towards the end.

My point is not to take a firm position on how to correlate Revelation with future events. My point, rather, is to expand our interpretive repertoire.

Did the binding of Satan mentioned in
Revelation 20:1-3 occur at the first coming of Christ or will it occur
at the second coming of Christ? This is the watershed question in the
millennial debate. Kurschner will equip you with what he considers the
best biblical argument against Amillennialism, explaining that the
binding of Satan cannot happen before the second coming of Christ. You can use this argument with the best that Amillennial teachers have to offer.

1) I'm an unrepentant amil. I'm admittedly hostile to classical dispensational hermeneutics. For instance, I think the commentary on Revelation by Robert Thomas is a reductio ad absurdum of that approach.

But to be fair, I think the weaknesses of classical dispensational hermeneutics represents an overreaction to the weaknesses of Augustinian amil hermeneutics. Augustine was a rampant allegorist, so that's a bad model of how to do exegesis. A mid-course correction was long overdue.

In addition, some amils seem to be repelled by the physicality of the premil/dispensational millennium. But Scripture is very down-to-earth. And discomfort with physicality often elides into liberal theology.

2) I think John's millennium refers to the intermediate state. But suppose, for the sake of argument, I was a premil. How would I argue for the millennium?

Although premils aren't committed to a literal 1000-year period, let's take that literally for the sake of argument. Why a 1000-year period?

Here's one suggestion: Is it coincidental that even though some prediluvians lived into their 900s, none of them broke the 1000 mark? The millennium is a transitional phase or compromise. Not as good as the eternal state, but better than life in a fallen world before the Parousia.

In a way, it parallels the balmy physical conditions of the prediluvian period. That wasn't as good as life before the Fall. The expulsion from the Garden, thereby barring access to the tree of life, made immortality a lost opportunity. Yet the millennium seems to be a throwback to the silver age physical conditions of the prediluvian period. Not the golden age of Eden. Yet there's a steady decline in longevity after the flood. The patriarchs are long-lived, but nothing like the prediluvians.

3) The stock amil objection to the millennial temple is that it's retrograde. And in a basic, indisputable sense, that's true. However:

i) One way of demonstrating that something is obsolete is to keep an example around. That way, people can directly compare and contrast old and new, before and after.

The millennial temple could be like a museum, to commemorate an important phase in redemptive history.

ii) There's nothing inherently wrong with taking an interest in the past. If we could jump in the time machine, surely many of us would like to visit Solomon's temple, as well as see many OT events for ourselves. That's not the same thing as nostalgia. That doesn't mean we think the past is necessarily better. It's just natural curiosity. Pious curiosity.

4) Is a millennial temple redundant?

i) In Ezk 8-11, the prophet has a vision of the Shekinah forsaking the temple.

ii) One question is what the visions represent. Are visions like remote cameras which enable the prophet to see things offsite, at a different place (and time)? Did the Shekinah actually forsake the temple? Or is this a symbolic vision?

iii) A related question is whether the Shekinah took up permanent residence within the inner sanctum, or did the Shekinah only enter and occupy the temple temporarily as God's way of dedicating the (Solomonic) temple? (Ditto: the tabernacle).

iv) It's striking that even though the temple was rebuilt, at the instigation of Haggai and Zechariah, there's no record of the Shekinah returning to the Second Temple, even to dedicate it, much less take up permanent residence. In that respect, the Second Temple was a hollow shell–unlike Solomon's temple.

v) Amils argue that Jesus is the new temple. And that identification is supported by John's Gospel. John also uses Shekinah imagery for Jesus (Jn 1:14). For a full discussion, cf. G. Beale, The Temple and the Church's MIssion, 192-200. So it may well be the case that from hereon out, a physical temple is superfluous.

vi) However, that raises the question of which person of the Trinity corresponds to the Shekinah. In the NT (e.g. Pauline pneumatology), the Shekinah is more often associated with the Spirit rather than the Son. Christians are temples in miniature. The indwelling Spirit is the NT counterpart to the Shekinah filling the sanctuary.

As such, the first and second advents of Christ don't necessarily exhaust God's self-revelation. Although there's a soteriological sense in which Jesus takes the place of the temple, he doesn't take the place of the Holy Spirit or the Shekinah.

So even if, during the Millennium, Ezekiel's temple (Ezk 40-48) was rebuilt, and the Holy Spirit once again manifested himself as the Shekinah within the inner sanctum, that wouldn't necessarily be redundant–for that would manifest a different person of the Godhead. Just as a Christophany is a manifestation of the Son, the presence of God in Christ doesn't preclude the descent of the Spirit as a dove at the Baptism of Christ. We can experience God in the person of the Spirit as well as the person of the Son.

vii) Finally, it's striking that the Son and Spirit sometimes take visible manifestations whereas the Father sometimes takes audible manifestations (Mt 3:17; 17:5; Jn 12:28-29). The Father is sometimes heard, but never seen. So there are different ways in which members of the Trinity manifest themselves to human observers. These are not interchangeable.

Although Christ is fully God, it's incorrect to say God is fully revealed in the person of Son, for the Son is not reducible to the Spirit, or vice versa.